


issue this

by fated_addiction



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Romance, and stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:53:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not many people read between the lines. It's a nasty hobby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	issue this

**Author's Note:**

> For [sunny serenity](http://sunny-serenity.livejournal.com/). Years later, lol.

A week into it, their therapist quits.

He cites exhaustion. This is the official report. He _declares_ a sabbatical. Fury looks at Barton, Barton looks at Romanov, Romanov stares at her nails.

“What did you _do_?”

Fury frowns.

“It was an assessment, sir,” Barton says.

“Two assessments,” Romanov gives cheek, or tries to give cheek. There is a curl in her voice. The accent drops and disappears.

Barton smiles. It’s almost proud.

“Three, really,” he says. He stands taller against the wall. His boots scuff. “But who’s counting – accountability, accountability, _accountability_ , sir. That’s our motto.”

What he doesn’t say is that he called Romanov by her first name and she nearly kicked his chair out from under him because kicking chairs is about as petulant as they get and they were both watching the therapist start the notes _this unique partnership remains superficial at best_ when Romanov broke cover and rolled into thicker, softer syllabus as she said to the man, “he didn’t kill me and so here I am?” because suddenly, this is what they do.

It’s early. They do this a lot.

You don’t need to remember this.

 

 

 

A long deserted road. There is snow.

This is really about a nook in the woods.

 _Clint_ sharpens a pencil with her knife.

“I want that back,” she says off-handedly. She is still fingering her curls with her nails. They are getting longer.

“I’ll give it back,” he replies.

“You will _not_ ,” she says, and it’s not above her to point out that she still keeps track of the knives that live in his bag, Seoul to Athens respectively. She curbs her voice though. He glares and grins. Then she says: “You _won’t_ –” because it’s just easier to be indignant.

He stays grinning too.

This is after Bucharest –

where Stark (but really Clint) pulled Banner (according to Clint they were _broing_ it out, whatever that means) out of a particularly complex situation regarding his lack of anger management and a multi-billion dollar deal thrown together by the government and a financial conglomerate that remains just as abstract as it was in the briefing and so the bomb that led to the _other_ bomb and so basically she was off, on a plane, in the middle of her mission to fix their mission and it was like picking up her very drunk older brothers except –

It doesn’t matter. Colorado is cold.

The weather report is still another foot of a storm and counting. She packed boots. He brought two extra coats. Their contact is still dead.

There will be a new one. This part doesn’t matter much.

“So Gina,” Clint starts, and Natasha scowls and it’s trite, but she does not get to pick this alias it turns out. She knows a Gina and Clint knows a Gina and well, that ended badly and say what you will, but she remains strangely superstitious about something when it comes to work. 

So Clint trains his gaze onto her. 

“Is charming,” she answers out of habit. “She’s also a terrible liar, flirts poorly, and has a perchance for sweet candies because her grandmother trained her well. She comes from money, but no one can completely trace where that began or rather, _ended_ but somehow that is the least interesting part about her.”

Then she stands. She shuffles forward. Her fingers press to his wrist. His fingers flex into the blade of the knife. He turns it to her. She doesn’t take it.

“And Michael hates her more than he loves her,” she murmurs.

She hears Clint scoff. “You’ve been reading those shitty paperbacks again.”

“Passing the time.”

“That’s _comforting_.”

Natasha smirks. 

“Michael does _not_ hate her more than he loves her,” he says, and then he is pulling the knife back into his grip. He flicks the blade back into its sheath, spinning it between his fingers. “If Michael hated her, he wouldn’t be with her. You can’t be with someone and hate them.”

Her hair falls into her eyes. She wears a heavy sweater. The wool curls at her throat and down into the collar of one of his shirts. It remains stiff.

“You can,” she murmurs.

Her eyes glaze over. First, last, and thirteenth or fourteenth evaluation you remember things like Moscow was red and cold and terrible and there is a such thing as nimble fingers. You can be Michael. You can be Gina and Natalia and maybe Anastasia, but you cannot remember to lose those days.

“Who was Michael for you?”

She asks then.

“It wasn’t who,” he says. The sheath catches her cheek. She presses back against it, looking up again. “It was _what_ ,” he says. 

“You’re getting philosophical,” she interrupts.

“No,” he says, and now, here, he’s stupidly indignant. His eyes flash. His mouth slides into that hard, graceless sort of smile – the kind of smile that she has never forgotten, not even once because it’s important, too important to discern his smiles. She knows which are for his bow and which are for the bullets. She does not smile.

“No?”

He shakes his head. “You can love and hate things. Ideas. But people belong to one extreme and the next. You cannot love and hate a person. Michael loves Gina. Michael loves her because she is tremendously engrained into his life. You cannot love a person who isn’t.”

She rolls her eyes her.

Natasha does this a lot.

 

 

 

They are not a department favorite.

When Fury says, “Get it _done_!” (and not with that exclamation because Fury doesn’t _do_ exclamations – it’s more like _get it done_ and a flat finish because that’s how the man got here) they cringe and listen.

Their seventh appointment with their ninth turn went a little something like –

“So,” the woman says, stretching her leg over her knee. Her skirt rises. Romanov flicks an imaginary piece of lint off her knee. “What happened in Hong Kong?”

“Wasn’t me,” Barton grins.

Romanov’s mouth purses. She picks a corner of the room. The therapist notices this. It goes from the corner of the room and to her desk. It remains over the cluster of frames at the corner of her desk too; mother, father, university graduation.

“I bet it’s going to read _unique_ again, Nat.”

The therapist watches Romanov. Her eyes flutter close. Her shoulders relax into the couch they share. That doesn’t seem right though. She should have noticed that first. Romanov is always relaxed.

“The building was rigged,” Romanov tells her.

“Protocol –”

Romanov raises a hand and the therapist flinches. Her fingers are elegant. Barton turns his head to watch his partner. She wiggles her index finger.

“Protocol,” she says smoothly, “is a training exercise – wouldn’t you say?”

“Or for uniforms,” Barton quips.

Romanov meets his gaze. “Or for _your_ uniform,” she says dryly.

“You like my uniform,” he grins with his teeth. His lip flares and she is leaning into the couch. The therapist shifts uncomfortably in her chair.

“It could use some work," she says.

Barton snorts. “Low blow, man.”

If the moment called for it, Romanov would allow herself some kind of serene smile. The corner of her mouth would turn. She would sit back in her chair. Shoulders set. Hands calm over her knee. She might stare at the therapist who, presently, was gagging the situation with visible discomfort.

If the moment called for it, of course.

“You’ll live,” she says, and Barton grins again – it’s the most you’ll get, neither say. They don’t have to.

After, the therapist presses her report into Fury’s hand personally. 

An hour later, her resignation follows.

 

 

 

Natasha watches the snow. It keeps thick against the windowpane.

The knife snaps.

“Why are we talking about this?” she asks finally. “You know the perimeters.” She doesn’t reaffirm for him. There is no _I know the perimeters_ either. “What we can’t predict is how cold Colorado is going to be this week.”

“Boulder,” he says.

“Whatever.”

She has it in her hand now – the knife, hers or his, whatever you want, it really doesn’t matter – and slides the blade underneath her nails. It clicks underneath them. There is no pain. There should be.

“You always get like this.” There is amusement in her voice. It’s almost faint. She thinks: this is dangerous. “Is it the cold?”

His nose wrinkles. She watches as his brow digs into his skin.

“I like the cold.” He’s defensive.

“I know.” She’s not.

“I just – “ and he pauses, and it’s always dangerous when he pauses, and you should be worried when Clint thinks about things because if Clint thinks about things you have to take into consideration his reaction time and his awareness _of_ his reaction time, each different and very, very similar. “I get bored sometimes,” he says, and she feels out the lie.

“You get bored,” she says.

He meets her gaze. She closes the knife. It flicks and snaps back into it’s housing. She slips it into the sheath, pocketing it into the back of her jeans.

“I get bored,” he repeats.

She’s quiet.

If you were Natasha (and you’re most definitely not) you would allow yourself room to assert the differences _between_ the possibilities of what that really means. She cannot allow herself that right now though.

Because this comes back to Loki, and even further back before Loki – there is Budapest and then there isn’t. There is the first day he met her and she met him and she can taste the barrel of a gun at her cheek and then pressing against her mouth in her first real, real kiss. She knows what she says to him ( _do it_ ) and it is as flat and as blank as you think it is ( _dare you_ ) because there is still so much that they don’t understand about each other and sometimes they decide that’s a problem, sometimes they don’t.

“She’d kiss him,” she says. “A lot,” she says too, meeting his gaze. She licks her lips. “It would be a distraction.”

“A distraction?”

“She knows how to use her body.”

“He does to,” he interrupts.

Her gaze is sharp. “It is not the same thing.”

“No,” he agrees slowly. The color of his voice changes. “It isn’t.”

It makes her swallow. They do this. It is not about Gina. Or Michael. It is just a strange, strained thing. Sometimes (if she still believed in luck) she thinks in cities. Thinking in cities keeps her head clean.

“Do you think he’s doing this on purpose?” Clint mutters. It’s not a question. There is a twinge of amusement.

She stares at the window. The snow is thickening again – again, odd to think. She watches the flakes twist into the glass. Reaching forward, her nails rap over the ledge and she sighs, leaning into the wall.

“You’re thinking too much,” she says.

“You think about it too,” he says.

“No,” she says. “You _think_. You scope too. It’s what you do. You put together things impulsively. You weigh your options. It’s what makes your shots _shots_ and your accuracy sound. I think that we were sent here because we were sent here. I always think that.”

Clint looks away. She catches it in the glass. The light fixes and lunges against his jaw. It makes a scar. She never looks too hard.

“Psycho babble,” he hums lightly.

Her throat feels tight.

“You hate when we talk.”

“It’s not really talking,” she says – it’s quick, sharp. His mouth twitches. She knows that by instinct. “You talk. I somehow manage to –”

“Listen?” he quips.

“You’re an ass,” she swears. And then there’s the Russian, unpracticed that somehow slips; it’s abrupt, affectionate, and the words curl. He shakes his head and then it’s his hand at the small of her back, his knuckles curling into the fabric of her shirt.

“We’re gonna get stuck here.”

She snorts. “We’re never really stuck anywhere,” she says, and it’s pointed, even as his fingers open against her back. She stiffens. That’s brief. Her shoulders set back.

“Hmm,” he says, or it’s more like, “ _hnn_ ,” and the deep, sharp sound comes in somewhere deep from the back of his throat. She feels it because he’s too close. Or he’s suddenly too close and she’s suddenly realizing this – one of those stupid, spare moments that is supposed to be rare and in between.

But then it’s like this: he does not fuck her. Then it’s like this: she does not fuck him. She does not consider it deep in these dark woods, miles away from the unsuspecting target (there is _always_ target and seriously, stupid – Clint says – do they have to be this suspecting to be unsuspecting – she rolls her eyes – since the truth is simple; everyone screws up) and miles away from the order behind their names. She does not consider every act and angle. She does not piece it together that way; there has never been any interest.

Instead, Natasha curls her fingers through his sweater. They sink into the loops of wool. Her thumb rests against a button. His mouth tips against hers. It presses hard but doesn’t move. He’s waiting. Maybe she’s baiting – it’s how she laughs against his lips anyway. Hers are slow, maybe trite and she opens her mouth to kiss him, maybe more. Her breath slips. The skin around her mouth is wet. She pulls her fingers again and his hands are at the small of her back, crawling underneath her t-shirt and counting the scars that are just there.

It strikes her. Kissing and breathing are the same sort of thing. She thinks she melts into him. She will never ask him _is this the same for you_ because that isn’t what she does. This isn’t how she works. There is no mystery.

She will just keep kissing him in these places.

The small nooks in the woods.

 

 

 

Fury closes the report.

The latest department removal stares back at him. Unflinching.

“It’s nothing new,” he says. He sighs. He sounds bored.

The therapist frowns.

“What?” Fury shrugs and digs out his wallet. It hits the desk. The therapist stares and his frown morphs into horror. “You think I don’t know?”

This resignation runs just as smoothly.

It’s usually about what you don’t need to know.


End file.
